Somakhya was utterly disappointed and the next day he asked me for he sheet of p

aper on which he had drawn the hyperbolic trisection of an angle, perhaps with a
longing for the stolen box. I took it out and we looked at each other in horror
: the hyperbola had utterly vanished! I could read Somakhyas mind that he was beg
inning to have conflicting feelings about the box. However, he could not take th
e theft lying down. Via several inquiries he obtained evidence that the thief wa
s Sphichmukh. He decided to recover the stuff and said that he was setting out w
ith Sharvamanyu and Vidrum to punish Sphichmukh and seize the stolen stuff. I sa
w them mount their bikes and tail Sphichmukh after school. Knowing that Sphichmu
kh was a lout with other hoodlums as friends they had armed themselves for the e
xploit. Somakhya had a bicycle chain, Vidrum a nunchaku, and Sharvamanyu a knife
. Seeing all this I felt a mixture of fear, curiosity, and excitement and follow
ed them on my bike at a safe distance to see what would happen. As they closed i
n on Sphichmukh he realized that his game was up, but given his usual temperamen
t he furiously rode to the edge of a pond and threw the bag with the geometry bo
x and Somakhyas drawing board into the murky waters where buffaloes bathed. The t
hree were livid with fury and it seemed they would have give Sphichmukh himself
a jalasamdhi; I feared they could land in prison themselves from that. So I pedal
ed hard to quickly reach the three of them and suggested that rather than smitin
g Sphichmukh or shoving him into the pond they should complain to the school aut
horities and I volunteered as an additional witness for Sphichmukhs crime. For so
me reason Vidrum then rather passionately asked Somakhya to let go off the box a
nd forget about it.

Perhaps, a bit mollified by my sight they desisted from a direct attack and Soma
khya complained as suggested. However, poor Somakhya had little traction with th
e school authorities; much to his chagrin, they informed him that since the cons
tructions he was drawing and the board were not part of the curriculum, which wa
s being taught at school they would not take any remedial action. They let off S
phichmukh after mildly lecturing him about the impoliteness of taking others thi
ngs. Somakhya revealed to me then that more than the loss of the box which he ha
d himself obtained for free he had lost something more precious with it. In the
same bag he had kept a khrkho with the yantra of the prvnya with the trident and the t
ree bhairav-s and the 3 supine bhairava-s. With the loss of the bag he also lost
his siddhi of the mantra-s of the prvnya.
Now we come back to the present. Starting this week we have changed our schedule
due to much haranguing by our parents. All four of us get up earlier and bike t
o the pond and run thrice around it. Thereafter Vrishchika and Varoli return hom
e because they spend a couple of hours preparing for their respective entrance e
xams before continuing with all the fun science we are doing. They seem more sin
cere in this business than I ever was. However, I and little Jhilli, being more
carefree, go to the adjacent hall to play table-tennis for some time along with
Abhirosha. Abhirosha is attempting a difficult exam for whatever she wished to d
o, which was quite removed from my path of life. Nevertheless, that exam had sev
eral stiff mathematical tests. I had trained her the previous year for her unive
rsity entrance exam and knew that she was quite capable of surviving the impendi
ng tests in algebra, calculus and numbers. But she does not have much of flouris
h in geometry so she is back to consult me. Thus, I and Jhilli decided to look a
t her problems. There was a problem of polygons whose areas and circumferences a
pproximate \pi. I remembered that Somakhyas father had once posed that to me and
Vrishchika he wanted to see for himself if we were really what what people said
about us. I let Jhilleeka solve that one. Then she took out a sheet of math-pape
r and showed a failed attempt of a construction of what should have been a Carte
sian oval on it. As she showed it she pointed to some unnecessary lines and rema
rked: Hell, where did these vertical lines come from out of the blue! This is is
spooky. Just then I caught sight of her geometry box and my jaw literally dropped
: How on earth did you get that box? Abhirosha: Actually, thats bit strange. I found
it by chance on the bank of the pond sometime ago. I looked at it more closely a
nd asked Abhirosha: Did it come with a bag? Abhirosha: Not it was all by itself den

ted and worn but the instruments inside were intact. Seems like the famous Germa
n engineering. I noticed that the dent corresponded to it being trampled by the h
oof of a buffalo. Now I was not surprised by the